I’ve never hated a game the exact same way I hate 21X, which I suppose is a compliment of sorts. Growing up, math class was for three things. (1) Hanging raggedly onto a good grade so I could get into medical school. (2) Inventing those math jokes where you hold the calculator upside-down to see the answer. (3) Programming text adventure games into my TI-83+.

Everything but the math.

Okay, that isn’t too bad.

21X, designed by Leo Samson, is all about the math. That’s his first mistake. It’s also a riff on blackjack. Second mistake. At least they’re mistakes if I’m considered the game’s target audience, which I’m fully aware I am not.

Really, though, you now know how to play 21X, more or less, provided you’ve got your operations in order and have a mind to suffer for twenty minutes. Exactly like blackjack, we take some cards, flip them up, and then decide whether to hold or hit.

The devil is found in the particulars. Rather than receiving an actual number, the way a decent Christian expects of their playing cards, you receive a fragment of an equation. Perhaps your first card present you with a modest 2-2X. Okay, not so bad. Then you flip your next card to reveal N³-2X. Okay. You’ve got this, king. You begin calculating. X can be anything you like, provided what you like is a whole number, positive or negative, and not zero. N is the number of cards in front of you. So you… hit? Is that right? Only your third card is now the sum of factors X, because you accidentally shuffled in all the cards, including the gold-foil promos that include Fibonacci sequences or whatever, and wait, is that a fraction over there? Shoot.

Look, I CAN solve this. It’s just that I’d rather not.

Meanwhile, exactly as in blackjack, you’re over here summing like your life depends on it, only for someone to announce they’ve hit 21, nice and clean, with only two cards. Oh, and don’t bother making 20. Too many of these cards add up to 20, so the game has relegated that digit to an island of failure in a sea of… well, still failure, but perhaps the right number to nominally succeed at 21X. So much for feeling smart.

Look, you shouldn’t listen to me. I’m a certified idiot, and that goes double for math. Every time I mention how much I hate 21X, the game’s gallant defenders ride down the hill to announce that they kinda like it, it’s an amusing way to pass a few minutes, there’s nothing wrong with flexing your brain muscles, and maybe you can cap off the evening with a stimulating discussion about the merits of the metric system. I get it. You love math.

Here’s what I love: odds. That’s a type of math, too. Blackjack isn’t the brainiest way to use a deck, but at root it’s a game about pressing your luck. Do you hold or hit? Do you maybe show off to your date and split? (No.) Yeah, there’s a rubric to the whole thing, holding on 17 and hitting on anything lower. But there’s also card-counting and long-term risk assessment and drama. In 21X, I’m pretty sure the nature of these cards makes it impossible to assess the relative merits of any given play. If I’m on 16, do I hold or hit? Hell if I know. Yeah, maybe John Forbes Nash Jr. would memorize the deck and internalize those odds. But John Nash was also bananas. I would know, I watched the documentary starring Russell Crowe. That movie won Best Picture. I’d rather not almost drown my kid in the tub because I was too busy talking to my invisible math friend, thanks.

No thank you.

Again, you shouldn’t listen to me. If you love math — this type of math — and you love blackjack, and you love alienating your loved ones, then 21X might be for you.

For me, though, it’s worthy of one solid math joke. Because this game is PEMDASS.

A complimentary copy of 21X was provided by the publisher.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read my second-quarter update!)